Victor Talmadge is an actor, director, playwright, and educator. He has worked extensively on stages throughout the Bay Area as well in New York and leading regional theaters. He was on Broadway in the world premiere of David Mamet's, November; played “The King” in the Tony Award-winning production of the Broadway National Tour of The King and I and as Scar in the Los Angeles production of The Lion King. Mr. Talmadge boasts extensive film and television credits, as well. As a playwright, his play, The Gate Of Heaven, was awarded The Nakashima Peace Prize and was the first live theater produced at The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and has been subsequently performed at several major regional theaters. He is currently Professor of the Practice and Director of Theater Studies, Mills College at Northeastern University.

 

“My mother was one of only eight relatives, amongst hundreds in my extended family living in Poland prior to WWII, to have survived or escaped the Holocaust.  My great Uncle, David Olère, an artist, was the only survivor of Auschwitz to pictorially document the gas chambers. His brother, my grandfather, was a leader of the Jewish Bund, and fought in The Resistance against the Nazis. I am one generation away from these events. They are all too real for me.  I am honored to be part of The Mitzvah Project, bearing witness, so that history does not repeat itself.”